Kyrsten Sinema Poised to Lose Democratic Primary in 2024

A new Data For Progress Poll finds Poll: Kyrsten Sinema Poised to Lose Democratic Primary in 2024:

Summary of Findings

For Senator Kyrsten Sinema, her next hurdle is going to be her 2024 primary election, where she is going to have to convince Democratic primary voters in Arizona that she deserves to keep her job. Activists who are disappointed with her obstructionism and reluctance to support President Biden’s popular agenda are already organizing to draft other high profile Arizona politicians, like Rep. Ruben Gallego, to run against her in 2024. According to our new poll of likely Arizona Democratic primary voters conducted in October, using the same methodology we used in the recent New York City mayoral primary, we find that Sen. Sinema faces a steep uphill battle to defend her record and convince voters she should stay — as negative sentiment towards her continues to grow.

In terms of job approval, the gap between President Biden, Senator Mark Kelly, and Sen. Sinema is stark. Both President Biden and Sen. Kelly had a strong showing in terms of approval numbers among likely Arizona Democratic primary voters. 85 percent of these likely voters approve of the jobs that Biden and Kelly are doing in their roles, while only 25 percent approve of the job that Kyrsten Sinema is doing. Overall, Sen. Sinema’s net approval stands at -45 percentage points, with 70 percent of those voters currently disapproving of the job that she is doing. It’s important to note that she’s underwater across every demographic.

Nationally, Sen. Sinema draws comparisons to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, another Democratic senator with centrist ideologies and obstructionist tendencies. But the political realities in the two states just aren’t the same. West Virginia proved to be staunchly Trump-country in 2020, having selected him over President Biden by almost +40-points. But Arizona narrowly voted for Biden in 2020 — and despite a Republican-controlled state legislature, in local and statewide elections, the state trends blue. This, and the markedly higher favorability ratings of her Senate counterpart, Sen. Mark Kelly — a fellow moderate who has largely backed the Biden agenda — suggests that Sen. Sinema’s positioning as a ‘maverick’ and obstructionist may be the wrong path to re-election, and is in fact alienating primary voters.

There are many qualified Democrats in Arizona who would represent the state more effectively than Sinema, and the visual between their support of these lesser-known potential candidates and their support for Sen. Sinema is striking. There’s a caveat to this, however: while most potential candidates we tested against Sen. Sinema did well, in a hypothetical primary election challenge it would be key for progressives to consolidate behind a single challenger in order to have the best chance of defeating Sinema. At present, the only path Sinema has to win this primary appears to be by too many candidates running and splitting the vote, thus allowing her to sneak by with her clear ceiling of Democratic primary voters.

That being said, even if multiple progressive primary challengers ran, Data for Progress finds in a hypothetical that Sinema still polls behind Rep. Ruben Gallego — a clear warning sign for the Sinema campaign.

Furthermore, when voters do consolidate behind a single Senate candidate not named Kyrsten Sinema, every single polled name — even candidates with low name recognition — wins with significant margins of support. One-on-one, each potential candidate we tested beats Sinema by approximately 30 to 40 points.

It’s clear that these voters overwhelmingly support the provisions of the Build Back Better Act, and would be much more likely to vote for a candidate who supports those positions. This parallels previous Data for Progress polling, which found that the Build Back Better agenda is very popular among Arizona voters across the political spectrum — not just Democrats and Independents. 

In particular, we find Arizona Democratic primary voters say they would be more likely to support a candidate who votes in favor of every major provision of the Build Back Better plan we tested. From Universal Pre-K to expanding medicare benefits, Arizona voters — those Sinema would be courting in a 2024 primary — express they are more likely to support candidates who back these Build Back Better agenda items by wide-ranging margins. Ultimately, Data for Progress finds that Arizona Democratic primary voters are most likely to support a candidate who will pass the Build Back Better Act and Democratic priorities in general — and may well unseat Sen. Sinema to make it happen.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s problems with her constituents are metastacizing since a July Data For Progress Poll. Who is Kyrsten Sinema Really Representing?

Halfway through her term as Senator of Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema is finding herself seemingly at odds with the members of her party. Her dedication to preserving the filibuster has stood as a significant obstacle to enacting a number of important bills and to more general Democratic governance despite the party’s trifecta in Washington, DC. Most recently, her unwavering stance on the filibuster enabled Republicans to block the For the People Act, a sweeping voting rights bill that is popular with the Democratic base, leadership, and her constituents back home in Arizona.

In a recent poll by Data For Progress, we found strong majority support for this bill and a number of others that are high on the Democrats’ policy agenda. We also found that Arizona voters from across the political spectrum are displeased overall with her performance as Senator. Taken together, this begs the question: if her policy stances are alienating leadership and voters alike, who exactly is Kyrsten Sinema representing in Congress?

We first asked voters directly for their thoughts on the Senator’s job performance, and the results paint a less than rosy picture overall: Sinema barely stays above water while not receiving majority approval across all likely voters, resulting in a very tepid +2 approval rating (44 percent approve vs 42 percent disapprove). These numbers stand in stark contrast to those received by Senator Mark Kelly, her colleague from the state of Arizona. With 50 percent of voters approving of his work as Senator and a net approval of +11 points across party lines, Senator Kelly has already achieved a much stronger reputation in the eyes of Arizonans. This gap in approval only widens when we look specifically at Democratic voters in the state. While Senator Sinema receives a respectable +23 net approval rate from Democrat constituents (54 percent approve vs 31 percent disapprove), this figure is severely outshone by the +89 and +76 approval ratings achieved by President Biden and Senator Kelly, respectively. Similarly, Senator Kelly receives much stronger approval from Independents, who give his performance a +12 net approval rating (45 percent approve vs 33 percent disapprove), in contrast with Sinema’s -1 rating from these same voters. Finally, with a -17 net approval among Republicans, it is clear that Senator Sinema’s commitment to bipartisanship has not netted her the broad coalition of support that she may be attempting to form among Arizona voters.

Voters responded even less warmly when asked whether they had a favorable opinion of Senator Sinema: across party lines, Arizona voters expressed a net unfavorable rating of Sinema of -4 points (38 favorable vs 42 unfavorable). More notably, the Senator is unable to receive majority favorable opinions even among voters of her own party, with only 42 percent of Democrat respondents expressing a favorable opinion of her for a net favorable rating of +3 points. Paired with her net 0 favorable rating among Independents and a -15-point unfavorable rating among Republicans, these results offer another indication that any attempts to fortify Sinema’s bipartisan credentials have not made inroads with voters across the aisle and may, in fact, be hurting her reputation among her base.

All of these results speak to the precarious position in which Senator Sinema is finding herself with her constituents, and heavily enforces the possibility of her being met with a credible primary challenge in 2024. When asked about their likelihood to vote in a Democratic primary, respondents, including both Democrats and Independents who vote in Arizona’s open Democratic primaries, expressed a fervent desire to participate in the process: an impressive 93 percent reported that they will either “Probably” or “Definitely” vote. Despite being 3 years off, this result alone is indicative of the level at which Democrats and other left-leaning voters are feeling activated by the current political climate.

Furthermore, these potential primary voters are already revealing the policy priorities and deal-breakers that may decide their vote. Particularly salient among them is the voters’ desire to eliminate the filibuster. Among likely Democratic primary voters, 66 percent have said that they would vote for another candidate who will champion filibuster reform compared to only 22 percent who would re-elect Senator Sinema should she continue to preserve it. As previously noted, her voting record up to this point would already place her in a relatively weakened position in a hypothetical primary challenge. If she remains steadfast in her resolve to protect the filibuster, regardless of reason, it seems quite likely that she will further push her base towards another candidate entirely.

That being said, there is no reason to believe that the Senator cannot remain true to her underlying commitment to bipartisanship while also pushing to deliver meaningful results to her constituents. From supporting the PRO Act (supported by a 41-point margin) to raising the minimum wage (that Arizona voters support by a 21-point margin), there are a wide variety of policy issues on which Arizona voters are united. This can be most pointedly seen in their support for the talking filibuster. When presented with this alternative, we found overall majority support for bringing back the talking filibuster to Senate procedures (54 percent support vs. 32 percent oppose). These results are bolstered by impressively consistent majority support across party lines, with Democrats, Independents, and Republicans all supporting the proposal by 21, 19, and 25-point margins, respectively. If nothing else, these numbers show that Arizona voters are eager to see any material progress made toward clearing the obstacles to policy change.

Whether it simply be due to a sincere difficulty to reach a compromise or a willfully obstructionist Republican party, progress on so many critical issues has recently and publicly ground to a halt. Arizona voters have taken notice, and they have expressed their desire to have representatives willing to actively fight through the gridlock and enact bold change. If Senator Sinema cannot convincingly advocate for that change, then the Democratic base that delivered Sinema her Senate seat will likely shift its support to someone who can.